Still Running Off at the Keyboard

PATRICIA MONAGHAN EXPLAINED

In case some of you didn't read through yesterday's linked Bill Forman article from Metroactive Books that focused on Robert Anton Wilson, I'm posting one of the interesting sections:

Careening wildly from detective story to first-person rant, from twisted history to apocryphal speculation, the Illuminatus works continue to influence the oddest assortment of young minds. Camper Van Beethoven were outspoken fans, as were the Seattle Posies, who paid tribute to Wilson on their first album. (Wilson says Guns 'N' Roses were also fans, but it's probably unfair to hold him responsible for them,) Author Tom Robbins is a Wilson devotee, as is Bay Area author R.U. Sirius, who took his name from Wilson's book, Cosmic Triggers, and went on to found Wired magazine precursor Mondo 2000. (Sirius is also one of the instructors at the Maybe Logic online academy, as are Dice Man author Luke Rhinehart; chaos magic godfather Peter Carroll; DePaul professor Patricia Monahan, who is also Robert Shea's widow; and several others.)

Wilson has also inspired at least two religions, or send-ups thereof: Discordianism took root in the immediate wake of the trilogy, while the Church of the Subgenius enshrined Wilson--in the form of pipe-clenching icon Bob Dobbs--as its figurehead some two decades later.

Mrs. Robert Shea is a faculty member at DePaul.

Robert Shea co-authored with Robert Anton Wilson (Pope "Bob"). That is the book that Wilson is most famous for.

To put this in context, check out a report by Michelle Mairesse at hermes-press.com. A few pertinent passages:

** Wilson grew up with nominally Catholic parents in a Long Island working-class Irish-Catholic neighborhood where the neighbors took Original Sin, the wrath of God, and the Devil quite seriously. "Men (and women) indeed become strange when seeking gods. As the present work will show, however, they become even stranger when seeking devils. And the narratives they invent have all the sinister charm and eerie cornball poetry of Bela Lugosi at his best moments.

** He was deeply influenced by nonconformist friends, such as R. Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, and by Israel Regardie, with whom he studied "magick." (Magick is Wilson's term for Aleister Crowley's occult system that imposes the supernaturally charged will on the natural world.)

** Remember that reference to Israel Regardie? He headed the Ordo Templi Orientis, which Wilson describes as "a Freemasonic-style ritualistic occult order that traces itself back to the Knights Templar. Although several groups have claimed to be the real OTO, and there were 1,0005 competing Outer Heads at one time, the federal courts have ruled that the order represented on the World Wide Web (see references) is the 'true' OTO of Aleister Crowley and have granted it tax-exempt status as a charitable corporation and religious entity." After Regardie's death, Dr. Christopher Hyatt assumed the leadership of the OTO. In the entry for Israel Regardie, Wilson writes, "One of Regardie's pupils, Dr. Christopher Hyatt, also practices Jungian-Reichian therapy and publishes books on both the Golden Dawn and Crowleyan schools of magick."

Like Hyatt, Robert Anton Wilson was also a pupil of Israel Regardie. Like Christopher Hyatt, Robert Anton Wilson also practices Jungian-Reichian therapy. Like Hyatt, Robert Anton Wilson also publishes books with New Falcon Publications, the publishing house of O. T. O.

Israel Regardie is best known for his book GOLDEN DAWN. It was one of the first books I brought home from the Kent State University library back in the late 90s after discovering the Gnostic Mass on the web and realizing that it was probably the ceremony spoken of by Malachi Martin. The books 700+ pages of fine print contains the magick rituals for the Golden Dawn. On the page opposite the foreword in the book is the following quote from the Fama Fraternitatis, (1614):

"Howbeit we know after a time there will now be a general reformation, both of divine and human things, according to our desire and the expectation of others; for it is fitting that before the rising of the Sun there should appear and break forth Aurora, or some clearness, or divine light in the sky. And so, in the meantime, some few, which shall give their names, may join together, thereby to increase the number and respect of our Fraternity, and make a happy and wished for beginning of our Philosophical Canons, prescribed to us by our Brother R.C., and be partakers with us of our treasures (which can never fail or be wasted) in all humility and love, to be eased of this world's labours, and not walk so blindly in the knowledge of the wonderful works of God."

Does Andrew Greeley write about this group of initiates in his novels? Wilson grew up in an Irish neighborhood reminiscent of Greeley's characters.

In an interview on the Positive Atheism website Wilson gives the following response:

RMN: The wars in the Middle East and the rising fundamentalism in the West have been seen by some as the death screams of organized religion. Both Islam and Christianity, however, have survived many "Holy Wars." What do you think the fate of organized religion will be?

ROBERT: I would like to think that organized religion is on it's way out, but I've been doing a lot of research on the eighteenth century for my historical novels. Voltaire thought that the Catholic church would be gone in twenty years, and it's hung around for two hundred years since then. When the Pope disbanded the Jesuits, Voltaire said that's the end, the Catholic church is falling apart. Well, a few years later they reorganized the Jesuits. The Knights of Malta are running the CIA apparently, and the Catholic church just refuses to die. Fundamentalism has staged a comeback. It's fantastic.

Wilson mentions Shea in the interview:

DJB: Have you had any experiences with lucid or conscious dreaming?

ROBERT: I've had a lot of lucid dreams, but I can't think of anything that's particularly worth discussing. I'd like to learn more about it. It happens spontaneously sometimes. I have a very rich hypnagogic and hypnopompic life, like Philip K. Dick. William Burroughs told me that his characters all manifest as voices in hypnopompic reverie before they have bodies, or names, or anything else. Robert Shea, an old friend of mine who's a scientific materialist of the most rigid sort, really blew my mind by admitting he hears his characters talking. I suspect all writers do. I think the difference between a writer and a channeler is that the channeler has found a way to make more money out of it than most writers ever do.

He makes a reference to consciousness studies:

DJB: What do you see coming along up to 2012?

ROBERT: In Leary's terms, I think about one-third of the West now understands the neuro-somatic circuit, and some techniques for activating it. I think that's going to reach fifty to fifty-one percent pretty soon -- and that will be a major cultural change. I think more and more understanding of the neuro-genetic and meta-programming circuits are coming along.

It's very obvious that quantum physics, parapsychology and all the work they're doing attaching brain scanners to Yogis and Zen masters means we're going to learn a great deal about the non-local quantum circuit. I think the history of mysticism has been sort of like a bunch of firecrackers with two or three going off every century. With the LSD revolution it became two or three every month and now it's moving up to two or three every week. I see a real acceleration in consciousness, just like in technology.

Bob Shea's obit can be read at the rosencomet website. Patricia Monaghan's relationship to Bob Shea is confirmed there. (Rosencomet is the web address of the Starwood Festivals, and there is a Starwood link at the bottom of the website.)

According to the Starwood "Starlist" speakers roster, Shea was a "no-show?" at the 1984 event:

Starwood IV: 1984 Devil's Den $35
Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shea (No Show?), Isaac Bonewits, Sally Eaton, Jim Alan, Selena Fox, William Eichman, John Bassette, Joseph Rothenberg, Jeff Rosenbaum, Michael T. Gilbert, Morgan, Martin Laubach, Michael "Puff" Ingalls, Ian Corrigan, Moira Kyteler, Norm Christiansen, Donna Boswell, Daniel Stool/S.C.A., Dr. Bryan Grotte, Amy Schurtz, Michael Schwartz, Linda Florist, Stardancer, Maggie Crosby

Entertainment: Forbidden Planet, John Bassette, Chameleon, Jim & Selena, Isaac Bonewits & Sally Eaton, Michael Ingalls

Another database indicates Patricia Monaghan was Shea's wife, and documents his work on Playboy Magazine along with Robert Anton Wilson.